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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Wealth Inequality in America?

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. – Ludwig von Mises

I believe Dr. Mises was speaking of man as a whole society, since government can indeed make small patches of men quite wealthy.

One of the upsides of following publishing giant Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) on Twitter is the exposure to all sorts of cool tech stuff, awesome information, etc. The downside is stuff like this from the Progressives at Common Dreams:

The video below is the subject and is diluted class warfare propaganda.

On the website linked to in Mr. O'Reilly's tweets the highest ranked comment is the typical stuff one would hear from an Occupy Wall Street gatherer, or a humanities professor:

Suspiria_de_profundisWell this would be defined as "The free market in action" wherein those fittest and most deserved of all that wealth acquire that wealth.

It the same system that has decided an elephant is worth more dead for its tusks of Ivory then it is roaming the Savannahs or that the Gulf of Mexico is worth more polluted with oil then as a healthy ecosystem.

It has decided there more value in dirty and polluted drinking water that leads to cancer and illness then in water that is clean enough to drink. It that concept of "Value added" when carcinogens are added.

People the world over praise its virtues and all but worship this mythical "free market". Many even insist things like minimum wage and pensions for the elderly and social spending prorgrams be eliminated and that all manner of Government regulations be removed so that the wealth distribution and what the BPs can do in the Gulf or "Art Collectors" with "their" ivory find a more "natural level".

Now a chart I would like to see is this. Take the amount of consumption of all species plant insect and animal as compared to the amount of "value" they add to the world and then compare man to the rest of nature.

That one percent of the species called man would be off the charts as compared to anything else when comparing what they create or add as compared to what they take or destroy.The very poorest of that species called man such as those that see themselves as part of nature in the Jungles of the Amazon and elshewhere would add.

That 1 percent are the true parasites on this earth living off the host and in fact those species that are reffered to as parasites add more "Value" then do these one percent. Capitalism along with that concept of "private property rights" was created to promote this system both unethical and destructive as it serves the masters of finance and consumes all in its path.

Where to start? For one thing we are pretty far away from a "free market" in the USA right now, and have been running away from it since at least the McKinley administration. The "solution" proposed by Suspiria de profundis is: More Socialism.

Now, the video does not mention free market, 'capitalism', or anything like that anyplace, although there are hints. It is more like a fact stating Rorschach test, not hinting at any causes, only showing effects. Also, it completely ignores income mobility, something we still have here in the USA while mainland China and others do not. A good article on income mobility here. H/t Sharper‏

I say "like" fact stating because it is not clear how they are measuring wealth. One of the YouTube comments raises some key questions:

aaron minguez
Using the videos math and stats
300,000,000 (people in the US) /1%=3,000,000
$54,000,000,000,000/40%=$21,60­0,000,000,000
$21,600,000,0000,000/3,000,000­=$7,200,000 per person
Given that there are closer to 5 million millionaires and there are 400 Billionaires in the US that number is much closer to $1,000,000 for most of the 1%.﻿ We all want to have $1,000,000... enough with the class warfare bullshit.

It would be fantastic if videos like this could be made about mainland China, or some of the other socialist utopias out there. If you want real inequality, of every kind, those are the first places to look. The second place to look is at heavily regulated countries with large amounts of public spending and nationalized industry, like here in the USA.